


Henry Stickmin Oneshots

by GrittyLegitty



Category: Henry Stickmin Series (Video Games)
Genre: Burt is tired, Dave is an idiot, Established Relationship, Jewel Baron Ending | JB (Henry Stickmin, M/M, most orbital station oneshots will probably be jewel baron idk, oh yeah babey!!!! s w a g, oneshot collection lets fucking go, sven is also tired, these bitches gay
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-10-13
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:07:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26994160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GrittyLegitty/pseuds/GrittyLegitty
Summary: *Starts rubbing my gay little hands all over these characters*I've decided that since I can't really write a consistent ongoing story, I'm instead going to write short edgy oneshots lmaoWill update tags as It progresses
Relationships: Burt Curtis/Dave Panpa
Comments: 2
Kudos: 45





	Henry Stickmin Oneshots

**Author's Note:**

> In which Dave escapes and Burt knows he's to blame  
> I'm also taking requests! I don't guarantee I'll write them but I get SO creatively bankrupt sometimes, it'd maybe help when I have writer's block idk   
> You can comment or message me on twitter @GrittyLegitty, whatever but yea <3

At first there was quiet.

Burt was working alone, for the most part, in his office, and the only background noise was the ever-present metallic humming that accompanied residence on a space station, as well as the air-con somewhere below the desk. The draught wound around his legs, and fluttered the comic strips taped to the wall. Sometimes he really regretted his clothing choices; ripped jeans were hard to live with when cold air lurks around, but he couldn’t really do much about it now.

He sighed.

Everything was uncomfortable. His fingers stung, eyelids were heavy, and his face felt numb; he suspected a cold. If he’d taken the day off to himself, he could have rested, given himself more time before the full force of the illness kicked in; Sven would have probably taken over announcements for a while if he’d asked him to, but he felt… indebted.  
The work he did for his superiors was never enough, and so he had to make up for that.  
Especially considering, well, most of his spare time was spent in the brig. They both knew that now, and the reason why.  
It sapped his motivation to work, but also made him scared enough to keep going. Maybe there was some hope in impressing the people that probably hate you?  
He highly doubted it, but pushed himself anyway.

He wasn’t quite sure why he made things so difficult for himself.

Well, no time to linger.  
He held down the intercom button with the heel of his hand and started his announcement.  
“Hello, everyone.”  
And proceeded with practised monotony, robotic confidence.

Until Sven burst through the opening to the office, a stack of papers in hand.  
“Interrupt the announcement, a prisoner’s escaped.”  
He sounded out of breath, his accent thick.

It took a few seconds for what he said to register.  
“It’s just come in that a prisoner has escaped from the brig. Can we get someone to investigate that-”  
Then it settled in, in the form of a lump in his throat.  
A pause.  
“Keep an eye out for absolutely anyone not wearing a top hat, or supported variants. Any reports are to be directed to me.”

He nodded to Sven, who nodded back and turned to leave. As soon as his back was turned, Burt put his head in his hands and let out a sigh that sounded more like a wheeze from a broken squeaker. So much for even trying to impress his superiors.  
If Dave had managed to escape, then it’d be his fault, traceable back to him too. Maybe Reginald would be merciful, or maybe his Right Hand Man would have more of a say in the consequences. Whatever happened, they’d know it was him.  
He could almost feel the Right Hand Man’s heat seeking vision boring into the metal beside him.  
Suddenly he didn’t care so much about trying to appease them… Well, maybe he did. He was just too tired right now. The miniscule amount of energy he’d had before had been completely sapped by the news.  
He left his office empty, and the rest of the station waiting for him to finish his announcements.

***

He really wanted to go look for Dave, he really did, but he couldn’t.  
He couldn’t bring himself to do any more than drag himself to the cafeteria and find the nearest seat he could that’d separate him from everyone else.  
Or at least people he didn’t have interest in talking to; Sven was there. Must have been his break, Burt guessed, but of course he didn’t treat it like one. The table space in front of him and the two seats that flanked him were covered in paperwork stained with coffee rings and dashed with crumbs.  
So he knew, because he took the seat adjacent and rested his head in crossed arms, letting his top hat hide him from the world.

“You didn’t finish your announcements.” Sven observes, without taking his eyes off the sheets in front of him.  
Of course he didn’t finish his announcements, and of course the first thing Sven cares about is his work. He didn’t really expect anything else.  
Burt doesn’t answer, instead opting to change topic.  
“It was the security guard wasn’t it.”  
“Hm?”  
“The security guard. He’s the one that escaped, yeah?”  
The blond glances up at him with a look as cold as his eye colour.  
“I don’t know.” He says after a second “I was only told that a prisoner escaped, and to tell you.”

Burt physically restrains himself from lashing out.  
“They didn’t give you any details about the prisoner? How are people supposed to know what to look out for? Surely that’d just make life easier for-”  
Sven puts his mug down a little too violently for his taste, cutting him off.  
“No, they didn’t give me any details, because no details are needed. We’re in an enclosed space, we all recognise each other. He won’t really be able to go anywhere, and if he does? He likely dies. He’s not important. It’s not urgent.”

Any protest he might have had dies in his throat. He isn’t wrong.  
No, of course he isn’t, it’s Sven. He has a point, he always has a point.  
Burt wants to point out that it seemed very urgent when Sven rocketed into his office but, knowing him, that was probably just a matter of giving him the news in time for him to announce it. He decided against it.  
Sven’s back to his work, he thinks, but Burt isn’t done.  
“Who told you?”  
Sven huffs.  
“Joe.”  
“Cool Joe?”  
A tight lipped nod.

For the first time since he sat down, he raises his head properly and looks around. At a table somewhere behind him, he spots a shock of yellow hair, accompanied by the gleams of both obnoxious (and likely fake) diamond earrings and a pair of (also likely fake) Ray-Bans.  
He knows Cool Joe has the same break period as Sven simply because of the sheer amount of times he’s mistook Earrings for him in the past, and wherever Earrings was, Joe probably wasn’t far behind.

“Hey, Joe!”  
For someone whose voice is usually so quiet and flat, Burt sure can yell.  
Joe looked up wordlessly.  
“The escaped prisoner, was it the security guard?”  
He nodded.  
Burt felt something in his gut. He wasn’t sure if it was positive or negative, but it sang of bitter victory.

When he turned back around, Sven didn’t look too pleased at his disruption. Before he could comment, though, Burt spoke.  
“It’s my fault he escaped.”  
Sven raised one thin eyebrow. “Is it now?” He moved his hair out of his eyes with the efficiency of someone that's done it thousands of times before. “Directly? Did you help him escape? You know if you helped him escape I’d have to report it, right?”  
Burt groaned and draped himself across the desk like a cat, Sven letting out a shrill noise as soon as the movement disrupted his mess of papers.  
“No, no- I didn’t help him escape, I-”  
He cut himself off when he caught Sven’s suspicious gaze, almost trying to plead with him to understand what he was trying to say without having to vocalise it, instead just pushing his eyebrow farther towards his hairline.  
“I, uh, I visit him a lot. Maybe I didn’t secure the door properly or something? I don’t know, you know I can be like that sometimes.”  
The other just hummed in agreement, gathering and straightening all the papers he’d displaced.  
“Well, you’d better go find him then, huh?”

So much for being any kind of help. Burt huffed, and took his leave, and Sven was alone once again.

***

Even though he was vital to the smooth functioning of the station, Burt didn’t have a very good understanding of its layout. People gave him news, reports from different parts and places that he’d name; he knew which area was close to another and had a basic grasp of a blueprinted layout, but paper didn’t translate well to real life.  
It was like trying to navigate a maze you’ve only ever seen a bird’s eye view of  
Honestly, Burt didn’t leave his office a lot, never really one for socialisation.  
The only reason he was usually anywhere else was Dave.

Any spare time he could find was spent in the brig, talking to Dave or, well, being talked at by Dave. Everything about him made Burt so… happy. The way he gestured when he talked, his nervous habit of rubbing the back of his neck. The fact that he didn’t mind that Burt didn’t trust him to run.  
Maybe he was right not to trust him to run.  
The happy feeling thinking of Dave had given him was gone as quickly as it came, being replaced by something colder and denser.  
Maybe Dave was using him to get a chance to escape. He didn’t like that thought, not at all.  
It made him feel ill, more ill than the fact that he didn’t actually know what had happened.  
Maybe he hadn’t run away at all; maybe he was taken. He didn’t like that thought either.

He took a deep breath, cleared his mind.  
Choosing to work under the assumption that Dave had escaped wasn’t what he wanted to do, but it was an easier basis to operate on.  
Even if it did make his chest ache something awful.

Burt found himself trying to put himself in Dave’s shoes, and then also found that… He didn’t actually know a lot about him. As soon as it came to trying to think like him, he drew a blank.  
For someone who talked so much, Dave didn’t talk about himself a lot, but Burt did remember one thing.  
Something about when he was being kept at the airship, he managed to escape (somehow, he didn’t give any details) and crawled around in the vents before being caught again, sometime later.  
That was a tough one to put into perspective. While Burt knew that the logical process would be to not go into the vents the second time around, he also knew that it’s probably something Dave would do.

So, he checked the vents. Every single one he happened upon, walking through hallways he half recognised and absently dragging his fingertips across each wall he passed, before eventually stopping, because he got yelled at by Sven for leaving muck trails all over the place. Y’know, air vents aren’t always the cleanest things.  
But other than a lot of dust and a couple of insects, he didn’t find anything. He wasn’t sure if he should be happy Dave didn’t go into the vents again or not.

He wasn’t sure why he was still looking.  
Dave had escaped. Well, obviously he escaped. Obviously he took that chance.  
Who wouldn’t? Who wouldn’t take the chance to escape. Who wouldn’t try to fight for freedom, even when being kept unwillingly on a big heap of metal floating in space after being held hostage for a year or so.  
Burt knows he wouldn’t, actually. But Dave would, because it’s Dave. Dave, who was an optimist, but could accept it when things went awry. Dave, who was noticeably weak, whose arms shook when he held his hand through the food slot on the door. Dave, who hadn’t seen much outside the confines of cells and giant floating crime bases for months on end and who hadn’t given up begging Burt to let him out, please, let him out.  
Dave, who was probably using him to get himself out of there.

And he didn’t care if he was using him to get himself out of there.  
All he cared about was what they had, and whether or not it was genuine.  
He wasn’t sure what he’d do if it wasn’t genuine.

…

There was one last place he wanted to check.  
It was getting late.  
There wasn’t really a good way of telling, because they were in space and all, but he’d seen Sven out of his standard work getup and decided it was definitely getting late enough.  
The storage room; he had access to it because he’d bullied said Swede into handing over his access card and tended to come and go as he pleased. And maybe he pocketed things he found cool, but Sven absolutely didn’t need to know that, and he’d probably revoke his loot privileges if he ever found out.  
And maybe if he ever found out Burt would kick his ass so hard that the stick up it bounced against the roof of his mouth.

And apparently even the mere thought of violence is enough to attract it.  
As soon as the door to the storeroom closed behind him and the lights buzzed to life, there was a lot of shuffling and whispers before three people leapt out from somewhere amidst the stolen valuables: a man and a woman wearing green top hats, neither of whom he could name, and a scruffy barefooted guy with a handcuff swinging from his wrist. The Ruffian.  
They looked ready to fight, until the former seemed to recognise who he was, and relaxed his stance.  
“Sorry ‘bout that.” He pulled his hat’s brim further down over his eyes. Burt held his hands up defensively.  
“No problem man, just… looking for something.”  
In the shadow, his eyes narrowed. “That escaped prisoner, innit?”  
Suddenly Burt wouldn’t mind engaging in a fight after all; he hated that everyone knew he spent time with Dave, but The Ruffian didn’t seem to mean anything by it.  
Just like the many other times he’d caught The Ruffian slacking off, he let it slide.  
He’d rather not get into a fight with someone so feral, and besides, staying on good terms with as many people as he could was in his best interest.

“Yeah.”  
Was all he said in response, and Ruffian bowed with some sort of honor.  
“Be my guest.” He gestured around the room like he owned the place, and Burt sucked his teeth before moving past and trying to ignore them laughing behind his back.

And Dave wasn’t here either.  
Again, a lot of dust and a couple of insects, but Dave wasn’t here.  
He didn’t know why he checked. It’s not like he could have gotten in here without crawling through some vents, and Burt had already established that most of the vents were free from any tampering. He sighed, and took off his top hat.  
The pads of his headphones were making his ears ache. Everything ached and his fingers were covered in all sorts of accumulated grease and dust.  
He was tired.  
He’d wasted his time.  
He’d dropped his duties.  
And for what? To go find a guy that might be using him, that might actually want nothing to do with him? To prove to his bosses that he wasn’t completely incompetent, when he couldn’t even clean up a mess he’d probably caused?

Burt stared at the stripy ribbon wrapped around the hat, listening to the ever-present metallic humming, and the excited whispering from the group of criminals playing some sort of mobile game, spitting sound effects that could only be described as audibly garish, and deciding his time would have probably been better spent bunking off in here with those three.  
Now he was just sad.

Sadness was something he’d learned to sleep off, anyway, he’d be fine tomorrow.  
Probably.  
Dave would turn up eventually.  
And if he didn’t? He’d just have to live with it.  
Probably.

He wasn’t sure what time it was, but it was time he was getting to bed.  
Retracing his steps proved to be much easier than half-blindly wandering his way around the place and hoping he came across something he recognised to use as a marker.  
Through the cafeteria; Sven was there, this time without his papers and looking significantly less stressed than usual, probably because he was just tired. Reginald was sitting in the corner with a book in his lap, with his Right Hand Man lingering somewhere nearby.  
Some people were up eating their breakfasts; the ship was divided by two opposite time zones, essentially, so they always had half of the crew active at any given time.  
It was still taking some getting used to, he wasn’t accustomed to people being so lively when he was so exhausted.

He didn’t even stop by to say hi to Sven, who at this point was the only person to regularly talk to him, and instead made his way directly to his living quarters.  
Half-heartedly swiping his card and near collapsing through the door made his room greet him with a bittersweet sight.

Dave was sitting on his bed.

Everything stopped.

He looked up from the spare hat he held in his lap and smiled.  
“Oh- hey!”  
Burt just stared at him, one hand still on the door handle.  
A moment of silence passed before Dave started looking vaguely uncomfortable.  
“Are you okay?”  
“How long have you been here?”  
Dave shrugged, but still hadn’t lost the air of oblivious confusion.  
“A while.”  
Burt blinked.  
“You left the door open. You didn’t shut it properly.” He continued.  
“I’ve been looking for you all day.”

Dave seemed surprised by that, before-  
“Oh… OH!” His grip tightened on the hat. “Oh, fuck. I’m sorry, I just… I left out of curiosity and got lost, and then I didn’t know where to go so I ended up crawling through the vent in the brig and then I ended up finding your room and…”  
He trailed off, looking up at Burt.  
The door was closed and he looked uncharacteristically upset.  
“Did I worry you?”  
Burt almost laughs.  
“Yeah. Yeah, kinda.” He puts his hat down on the bed. “I thought you might have been taken.”  
He swallows. “Or something.”

“I’m sorry. I just.” He makes some vague gesture with his hands, struggling to find the right words.  
“No, It’s fine.” Burt runs a shaky hand through his fringe. “It’s fine.”  
Dave just watches him.  
“That’s a weird situation to be in.”

Dave gets off the bed, awkwardly; the mattress dipped in all the wrong places, but he got to his feet eventually and hugged Burt, burying his face in the front of his shirt. Burt instantly hugged back, shaking.  
“I’m sorry I worried you.” His words are muffled, but it’s fine.”I’m sorry I left.”  
Dave feels so small in his arms, without his shoes to somewhat compensate for the advantages Burt’s platforms give him, he’s so short, and yet now Burt feels like the small one.  
“It’s fine.”  
He buries his face into Dave’s blond hair, his hat discarded somewhere on the bed beyond.  
“You’re fine.”


End file.
